


The Nightmare In Your Head

by breakdancingsigma (hetawholockvengerstuck)



Category: Guardians of the Galaxy (2014), Guardians of the Galaxy - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, Post-Movie, heavy spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-23
Updated: 2014-08-23
Packaged: 2018-02-14 05:47:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,663
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2180277
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hetawholockvengerstuck/pseuds/breakdancingsigma
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the Battle of Xandar, the Guardians find themselves experiencing the memories of their teammates in the form of dreams...or, rather, nightmares. Everyone has something to run from, it seems.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Nightmare In Your Head

**Author's Note:**

> This is a response to the following kink meme prompt: http://guardian-kink.livejournal.com/1806.html?thread=208398#t208398

Since the  _Milano_ had taken a heavy beating during the battle, Nova Prime arranged for Peter, Drax, Gamora, and Rocket--along with the tiny potted twigs that were beginning to look as if they had a face--to stay in the best rooms the city had to offer. It was a suite: four bedrooms with bathrooms, branching off of a common dining/living area. The walls were blindingly white, the furniture only slightly less offensive to the eyes. Rocket immediately found a sunny spot by the window for the pot.

There was still plenty of daylight left, but after all that had happened--after the fear of failure, the strain of holding the Infinity Stone, and the adrenaline crash that followed--no one was in the mood for small-talk or dinner. They each went to their separate rooms and crashed for the night.

* * *

Peter found himself in a strange house, surrounded by people he had never seen before. They were all green, with kind eyes and dark hair, and although Peter recognized none of them, they also felt...familiar, in a way. 

 _My family,_ he thought, but that couldn't be right. 

Life was peaceful. Peter felt safe, surrounded by those who loved him and provided for him, on a planet that knew nothing of war. 

Then the ground seemed to shake, and smoke reached his nostrils. There were screams from outside, screams from inside, his father was shouting, his mother was gripping his two younger siblings and motioning for Peter to join them. 

He ran instead.

He ran and ran, away from the smoke, away from the chaos, until he found his way blocked by a wall of blue-skinned creatures. Frightened, Peter turned and ran in the other direction, following the crowd of people being herded into a small area.

He watched as those same people were felled one by one, watched as the family that wasn't his family died in agony. Waited for death to come, but it never did.

Suddenly, he was aboard some sort of ship. The scenes went by quickly, but painfully: torture, surgeries, conversations with a grotesque creature who called Peter "daughter". He saw Nebula, much younger; he fought against her often, feeling nothing at first, then something he couldn't quite define. 

Before he woke up, he identified the feeling as regret.

* * *

Gamora briefly glimpsed what she knew to be her childhood: men and women with tattoos, training and fighting together, eating communally, living simply. These were people who lived and died by the sword, honorably.

There was a joyous period, with her wife Hovat and her beloved daughter Kamaria. She played with the little girl, taught her how to wield a dagger, watched with pride as she learned to walk.

All too soon, it was over. She returned from a raid and found her house in ruins, saw the remains of her wife and held her daughter's body close to her chest as she let out a scream of pure rage towards a sky that didn't even have the decency to rain. One thought ran through Gamora's head: she had to find the person responsible, someone to channel this rage towards. Hers were a people of action; if she remained here, while her family's murderer lived free, there would be no peace for her.

The galaxy was vast, and there would have been no way to locate the fiend if Gamora had not happened upon a dying neighbor. When Ronan was named as killer, Gamora felt a sense of purpose. Part of her likened it to a cloud lifting in her mind, but the other part was unable to comprehend, or even think up, that simile.

She spent years leaving a bloody trail across the galaxy, but she was no closer to exacting revenge. Each time she hit a dead end, she became angrier, and her resolve hardened. What mercy was left in her body was extinguished; instead of allowing despair to take hold, she simply became more violent and vicious. Anyone who had any connection to Thanos or Ronan was to be slaughtered; she hardly cared if that meant she was losing valuable sources of information--the only way to keep the pain at bay, to keep herself moving forward, was to kill, and kill often. She would kill each and every foe brutally, so they might feel what her wife and child had felt in their last moments. 

Finally, she found herself in the Kyln, frustrated because there was no way out. Somewhere, Ronan was sauntering around the galaxy, no doubt plotting the murder of even more innocents, and Gamora was trapped. She was desperate for someone to kill, but she knew that, unless their death contributed in some way to her cause, they would mean nothing. If only one of these lowly creatures would piss her off.

If only one of Ronan's lackeys would turn up. Gamora smiled to herself, imagining the many terrible things she would do to those monsters once she got her hands on them.

* * *

At first, Drax couldn't make sense of what was going on around him. He could  _feel_ , but he could not  _see_. After what seemed an eternity, he experienced sound for the very first time; a short time afterward, he opened his eyes and blinked about at the dirt walls.

He lived a simple life with his mother and sisters, until that moment of terror as he was separated from his family, but that was soon replaced with something much worse.

Pain. Endless pain. So many types of pain, more than Drax had ever thought possible. Cramped cages, lights that burned his eyes, surgeries with the bare minimum of anesthetics; his spine was modified, his paws altered so drastically they hardly looked like paws anymore, his head--

The creatures in white coats and strange masks did this over and over, until they were satisfied; then came the conditioning.

He quickly learned not to douse his food; doing so would lead to a powerful electric shock. If he tried to sleep during the day, he was punished; if he tried to sleep curled up in a ball, he was forcibly straightened out. Sometimes the scientists would drop a bit of food on the ground, and he'd try to reach through the bars and get it, only to have his hand--not a paw, he couldn't call it a paw, they wouldn't let him--slapped away. Or, if he got the morsel, they'd hit him until he let go; Drax could never fit his hand back through the bars with the food in it. If he refused to let go--absolutely refused--the scientists would break his fingers, then perform a surgery to fix them up again. 

Eventually, after a particularly traumatizing surgery, Drax learned to speak. By now, he could only vaguely recall his early days--his brain had been modified so much that it almost wasn't  _his_ anymore. He started sassing the scientists, trying to make himself feel as if he had some measure of power over them. Sometimes he was punished; other times, he was rewarded for speaking, for being a successful experiment. Drax was trained to be a weapon, taught to use guns and build bombs and take lives.

Not a single one of those lab-coated geniuses had enough common sense to realize that that was a bad idea. They were genuinely surprised when their creation destroyed the facility.

Drax wandered the galaxy by himself for a time, bitter and trigger-happy, seeking a fortune just for the adventure. He picked fights with anyone who looked at him wrong, stole anything that took his fancy, thought nothing of the consequences of his actions...until he met Groot.

After that, things seemed to get better. Finally, after so many years, Drax felt as if someone understood him. 

Then his life came crashing down around him all over again as the  _Dark Aster_ fell from the sky.

* * *

Rocket was sitting in a chair in a medical facility, fiddling with his Walkman. There was a horrible throbbing in his left eye from a fight earlier, but Rocket chose to ignore that; instead, he focused on the music, letting it fill him and wash away all the concerns that were attempting to take over his mind.

He was vaguely aware of someone speaking; the next moment, the music was gone, and Rocket was blinking at a tired-looking Terran. The man turned off the tape, told him that his mother wanted to see him, and ushered Rocket into a smaller room. There were people everywhere, most of them medical personnel.

A woman with no hair was lying on a hospital bed, following Rocket's movement with her eyes. Her weak, emaciated form was almost too much for him to take, but he made himself face the woman, his mother, and listen to what she had to say.

The man behind him--his grandfather--reminded the woman that she had a present for Rocket--except they were calling him Peter. For some reason, this didn't strike Rocket as odd.

"Take my hand, Peter." The woman could only lift her hand a few inches off the bed. Her eyes implored Rocket, but suddenly it was all too much; he turned away, trying to bury his face in his grandfather's shirt, resisting the man's attempts to turn him around. Then a horrible droning replaced the steady beeps, and an icy chill shot down Rocket's spine. 

He was hauled out of the room, struggling the entire way, screaming so loud it was a wonder he didn't injure his vocal chords. His grandfather told him to stay put, but Rocket wouldn't--he  _couldn't_ stay still, because his mother was dead, and he was all alone, and no one seemed to understand. He ran out of that horrible building where his mother's body lay motionless, ran away from the pain and loss, but it followed him, until he couldn't see for the tears and the blinding pain. He collapsed on the grass, unable to think, only able to sob.

Suddenly a bright light hit him, and he looked up, scared, but curious. He felt a tingling sensation, saw his uplifted hands begin to dematerialize, and his screams changed from those of sorrow to ones of fear. He couldn't see what was taking him, but he didn't want to go. His father was supposed to find him, how could he do that if Rocket was gone?

When the tingling stopped, Rocket was surrounded by leering faces. One in particular stood out: blue, with some sort of device on his head and a strange arrow at his belt.

The next moment, Rocket was taller, dressed in a leather jacket. The blue man was threatening him again: "When I picked you up on Terra, my men wanted to eat you! They'd never tasted Terran before..." None of this was new information to Rocket; Yondu always said this when he was disappointed in him. It was meant to scare him, to pressure him into finding a way out of whatever predicament Rocket had gotten himself into. 

He hadn't opened his mother's gift yet. If he opened it, he'd have to admit that she was gone forever, and that in her final moments, he'd failed her.

* * *

The next morning, when Peter stumbled out of his room, he found Rocket watering the pot of sticks--no, not sticks. They were most definitely a tiny, adorable Groot now.

"Mornin', Rocket," Peter yawned, doing his best to forget the weird dream he'd had last night. 

Rocket jumped, splashing water onto the windowsill and eliciting a tiny " _Gwoooo_ " from Groot. "Oh, hey, Quill! Didn't see ya there, buddy!"

"We made eye contact when I came through the door."

"Did we? I didn't notice!"

Peter opened his mouth to argue, but at that moment Gamora joined them, and he suddenly felt no desire to say anything at all. He chose to look at Groot instead of greeting Gamora.

Drax came out of his room just as a maid arrived with breakfast.  The table in the dining area was small, with only four chairs. There was a lot of shuffling as the Guardians tried to find a place to sit; Groot watched curiously from his place at the window.

After ten minutes without conversation, Peter asked, "How did everyone sleep?"

"Pretty average," Rocket replied a bit too quickly.

"Nothing out of the ordinary," Gamora added.

"I did not sleep well," Drax said.

After a moment, Peter said, "Well, if anyone cares,  _I_ slept like a baby." Not true. Not true  _at all_.

"I did not hear any crying during the night," Drax said. "My hearing is very sharp."

"No, no," Peter said, "it's an expression. It means I slept well. You know, like, when little kids are sound asleep..."

"I don't want to talk about children," Gamora mumbled, pushing her food around her plate.

They lapsed back into silence until Peter got up and turned on his tape deck. The moment _"_ I'm Not In Love" came on, Rocket slammed his fork down. _  
_

"Switch it."

Peter looked puzzled. "What gives? You've never had a problem with it before."

"I said  _switch it._ "

A tiny voice said, "I am Groot?"

"What's  _wrong_ is that I can't believe  _you--"_ and here Rocket pointed to Peter "--would actually wantto listen to the song that was playing moments before your  _mother died!"_

Peter froze instantly. "How did you...?"

Drax stood up and towered over Rocket. "Your distress is confusing, you who have never felt attachment to a maternal figure."

"Can we  _please_ stop talking about families?" Gamora hissed.

"Okay," Peter said, "what the hell is going on with us?"

It was Gamora who broke the silence this time. "I believe I dreamed Drax's memories last night."

She expected sharp intakes of breath, maybe anger on Drax's part. What she got was three relieved sighs and a slightly more relaxed atmosphere.

"Thank god it wasn't just me," Peter said, chuckling and running a hand through his hair.

"Makes me feel a little better about intruding on someone's past," Rocket added.

"Did all three of you dream about my memories?" Drax asked. "I believe I witnessed friend Rocket's."

Rocket shuddered. "Man, I am so sorry you had to go through that."

Peter turned to Rocket. "You saw my mom die, didn't you?"

Rocket just nodded. Across the table, Gamora groaned. "So that means Quill got my memories."

"Does anyone know what caused this?" Drax asked.

"It's the Infinity Stone," Gamora said. "It has to be. When its power was flowing through us, we transferred bits of ourselves to each other. I wouldn't be surprised if we each dream someone else's memories tonight."

Rocket shuddered. "Damn, this is creepy as hell. Any way we can get out of each other's heads?"

Gamora shook her head. "I think we should just let this run its course and hope it stops on its own. Perhaps it will help us understand each other better."

* * *

It did, in the end. Drax, Gamora, and Peter learned not to comment on any of Rocket's occasional raccoonish habits, and knew when to leave him alone with Groot for a chat; they had all seen the effect the _F_ _lora colossus_ had on Rocket. The  _Awesome Mix_ tapes took on a new meaning for the Guardians, as they learned the stories behind the songs. On the anniversary of the death of Drax's family, everyone made sure to give him space to mourn--and plenty of punching bags. As for Gamora, she found that her teammates were incredibly supportive whenever she seemed sad, complimenting her or distracting her from her thoughts. Drax even assured her that, if Nebula was willing to fight by their side, he would accept her.

There was something else that they noticed, too: as they got to know each other better, Groot's regrowth accelerated. When they speculated as to why, they received the response, "We are Groot." It needed no translation.

**Author's Note:**

> Since Groot wasn't holding the Infinity Stone in the final battle, I've decided to exempt him from the nightmare swap. 
> 
> I tried to have them experience memories in the order in which they channeled the infinity stone, starting with Peter dreaming and ending with his memories in Rocket's head.


End file.
